Freedom

[ApeTheDog]

If there's one concept in my entire life that I've never fully grasped, it's that of freedom. Often when I'm doing something I've never done before, like for example being the first person to start dancing on a empty dancefloor, I'll get really happy and feel free.

But am I? No. What I feel is the excitement of, as you could say, rubbing it in societies face. Doing something extreme.

But is that freedom? Doing something not many other people do?

In many ways, what you do is still not your choice, since it's being forced on you by virtue of the many people who don't do it.

What is freedom? Is it intellectual? Thinking what you want to think.

You can still not act on it. You cannot shoot anybody. you cannot do what you want to do - what use are freedom of thoughts when your thoughts aren't free to follow up a good idea with an action?

It's easy to come up with just A defenition of freedom. Being INTP, I'm terribly good at bullshitting my way out of something. I could give a theory of freedom right now - if I set my mind to it, in 5 minutes I've written something down that many people won't be able to tell I'm not at all convinced of.

But I want to KNOW. Freedom is so important, and is denied to us in so many ways.

(How) Can a person ever be free? Are we not all enchained by our corporeal bodies? Are we not imprisoned by other peoples claims to power, individuality and territory? What's up with all this?

So, this thread is simple for the all-encompassing discussion about freedom. What are your ideas about it?

[crofbe]

The world is deterministic, humanity gives us the concept will, and so it is up to you to define freedom in your own way. There is no absolute conception of freedom, anybody who's thought about it and who's wanted it is as dead as anybody didn't. So, what is it you want to do? Shooting somebody isn't very realistic, but being extreme, that is.

"Thinking what you want to think."
by def, your thinking is what you're thinking.

[ApeTheDog]

But why is there no absolute concept of freedom? Because nobody has ever been free. I think gradations exist- you can be more free than somebody else, in some areas - but I think nobody can ever truly be free.

Buddhist try to attain a state of freedom by letting go of all things material. They'll go as far as burning themselves to prove it. Are they free - or are they slaves to a dogma, a religion?

Yes, thinking appears free. But is it? You're often bound by language in your thoughts - you cannot think everything. You often need knowledge to come up with certain ideas. Einstein could not have come up with his theory of relativity without having learnt about gravity, and so on, from others. Were his thoughts free? His theory of relativity certainly wasn't, well, free - since it wasn't entirely his own. Plus are your ideas free if you can't make them come true?

[crofbe]

Good questions, it's 4AM over here so I'm in the perfect mood to answer them =)

"Buddhist try to attain a state of freedom by letting go of all things material. They'll go as far as burning themselves to prove it. Are they free - or are they slaves to a dogma, a religion?"
ESFJs will attain freedom by letting go of all things mental. What if you were "free" to explore with play-doh and legos? Check out http://www.amyhughes.org/lego/church/index.html, it's an excellent example of a free mind at work.

For me, I don't think a completely abstract state is ideal, though it certainly is possible. One - you still have a material body, so to achieve this state would mean to forget (completely) all your physical experiences. Maybe one can say that a child is free, in that children are still innocent. In that sense, they are.

"You're often bound by language in your thoughts"
Even more basically your thoughts are bounded by your mind.

"Were his thoughts free?"
To my understanding, much of relativity had become inevitable after Mach. All physics needed was some sort of catalyst to solidify it, and that came in the form of Einstein. But his thoughts definitely were original.

And of course, you can find his theories online, so in the material sense it's very free.

[Wilde Mutton]

Freedom encompassing the wall between what is possible and what is actual? It would serve us to first ponder the difference between the potential and the actual, and if there is such a difference. Also, as you have yourself pointed out, the nature of the realm of possibility is not a clear one - are there possibilities which cannot be identified as such because of dogmatic thought processes, or because such possibilities may not be imaginable at all? (Picture, if you will, something beyond the limitations we set for any object for it to be perceived, much less understood. Those limitations are the Euclidian glasses before the eyes of the beholder. If there is anything beside them remains a mystery. We simply couldn´t see it were it there, looming on the very edge of our understanding.)

[ApeTheDog]

Good questions, it's 4AM over here so I'm in the perfect mood to answer them =)

"Buddhist try to attain a state of freedom by letting go of all things material. They'll go as far as burning themselves to prove it. Are they free - or are they slaves to a dogma, a religion?"
ESFJs will attain freedom by letting go of all things mental. What if you were "free" to explore with play-doh and legos? Check out http://www.amyhughes.org/lego/church/index.html, it's an excellent example of a free mind at work.

I don't know if he's a free mind. He makes a church - churches exist in the outside world. He is merely copying them. He's stuck to following the preset mold. He limits himself there.

ESFJ's will attain freedom by letting go of all things mental? Not very realistic. Was Terri Schiavo the most free person in the world?


For me, I don't think a completely abstract state is ideal, though it certainly is possible. One - you still have a material body, so to achieve this state would mean to forget (completely) all your physical experiences. Maybe one can say that a child is free, in that children are still innocent. In that sense, they are.

Yes, some people are more free than others. Children aren't free at all, though. They have parents that can control them. I understand your meaning, they're less tied down by what is proven to work/not work in reality and use their imagination more. So then imagination is freedom?

Not really. Because with imagination comes a lot of failure. It would only be freedom if you could imagine things and they were always true. Like if you were God. In the real world, a lot of imagination means you actually need parents to control and restrict your actions, so you don't run into trouble.


"You're often bound by language in your thoughts"
Even more basically your thoughts are bounded by your mind.

Yes, and your intelligence. And so on.


"Were his thoughts free?"
To my understanding, much of relativity had become inevitable after Mach. All physics needed was some sort of catalyst to solidify it, and that came in the form of Einstein. But his thoughts definitely were original.

And of course, you can find his theories online, so in the material sense it's very free.

Yes, free - but things that are free don't have anything to do with freedom. And his thoughts were original, but without the theory of gravity einstein would never have been able to write his theory of general relativity. He could only get there because someone else had already explored that region. It was not his discovery alone.

[relaxo]

Freedom can not be divorsed from reality. You are not free to do anything you want because it is not possible for you to disobey reality. You are not free to be omnipotent because reality does not allow that. You can not have "freedom" from your body.

Freedom is the absence of physical coercion. Coercion being "the act of compelling by force of authority".

Your body does not force you to be part of it. You are part of it because it is you. Talking of freedom in this context is meaningless.

The need to eat does not force you to starve. You can not have "freedom" from hunger. You can certainly be free from hunger, but the concept of freedom does not apply to hunger.

The items you are discussing here have nothing to do with freedom. They have everything to do with trying to deny reality. Once you realize you can not do that, you decide there is no such thing as freedom. At that point you can decide since there is no such thing as freedom, people don't need it since it does not exist. Once you decide that, you are "free' to use physical coercion to take what you want from others.
This arises because you have confused the concept of freedom and wish to remove reality as an obstactle to your daily life.

[Shai Gar]

who says it is not possible to be omnipotent?

because they are wrong, i think it is very possible to be omnipotent. the only thing stopping us, is ourselves

[relaxo]

Depends if you definition of omnipotenent is to disobey reality or control it.

If one can be omnipotent, then that is part of reality and that omnipotence can not disobey it.

[Vagabond]

Freedom is to do whatever you want to/with yourself, regardless of whether the social group approves or not (not to rub it in their face) while you are not affected by the acts of other people, either because they are not imposed on you or because they don't matter to you. Utopia basically. Then of course one could say you are still a "prisoner" of your own physical needs and desires imposed by nature, so I don't know how total freedom could possibly be on any level.

[Shai Gar]

to control it or to manipulate it, that is omnipotence

your logic is something i have amused myself with over the years whenever anyone says unnatural. there is nothing on this planet that is unnatural, simply synthetic

[meshou]

You give the example of being unable to shoot someone. You can shoot someone, very easily.

That you may get caught doesn't make the option any less available.

The cost of making any choice, no matter what it is, is the results are often unpleasant for you. So, whether the results are pleasant or not should not effect you decision on whether you should make them.

You can argue you don't have choice, but you always do. Even in a choice between doing something and death, death is an option.

Lack of freedom comes from limiting your choices to only what is pleasant, or refusing to choose when all options are unpleasant because you want pleasant options that don't exist.

If you are willing to go through suffering, and are willing to die, you can choose to do anything. If you say "I am not free because The Man makes doing what I want to do not fun!" then all they have to do is take away your TV and sugar, and they can 'make' you do about anything. It's all up to you.

[kuranes]

I'm often amused that some people are so hell bent on being "free" to do whatever they want, whenever they want, that they push for rights which can be favorable to me sometimes, and annoying at others. For instance, many people who want to ride bikes on busy crowded roads, weaving in and out of traffic - would conceptually like to be able to ride them on the freeway as well. Obstructing the faster cars? Tough shit for those drivers. You see, the drivers are obstructing the bike riders' "freedom." The question is implied of whether anything more powerful than a bike has more disadvantages, long term, than advantages. So then you are off the freedom question, and talking about ecology instead. But you're free to do that. And I'm free to

[nBT]

you are right if you say that most people do not take enough freedom for their actions, and the limits also have been discussed here. kunranes brings up another point.
haha now: are you free to choose not to be free? appearantly physics have us trapped in space and time. biology and medics have us trapped in food, warmth, and reproduction. besides these 'common limits' there are also 'choice restrictions'. why do you out of free will choose this and not the other option?

[trendal]

I think that freedom and "fee-will" are mere illusions brought on by our human-type consciousness.

Is any decision you ever make, made in a vacuume? Can you say you have ever made a choice without a reason for choosing the way you did? Further, can you make a choice without something prompting you to make a choice in the first place?

I think we are all reactionary beings - the choices we make are dependant on a long chain of causality that stems back possibly to the moment of our birth (or before?) but certainly back to our first conscious memory.

Free will is an illusion, and as the Oracle says...all we can do is try to understand why we have made a decision.

[cuspuser]

To the first post ... I can come up with ways to support the ideas of free will and determinism ... in this way i don't think we can be certain that we are free in this way ... but even if we make the assumption that the world is deterministic there is still this feeling of freedom ... which i guess could be best defined by its opposite and that is lack of restraints/restrictions ...

i am free to choose between two options and this feeling of freedom about the choice in the outcome can be said to be what freedom is ...

lets say someone is chained to the wall and they want a glass of water that is in front of them on a table, we would say that they aren't free to make a choice in this matter, they are constrained to one course of action ...

while if we have a glass of water in front of us in normal circumstance we are free to make this choice, or at least we feel we are free to make a choice of whether or not to take a drink, even if the choice is primarily a result of internal survival drives rather than the will to which we normally subscribe the notion of freedom to.

take a rat in a cage with a choice b/w water and a saliene solution ... say its also been shocked every time it drinks the solution ... so it chooses the water, imagine you were this rat you might feel free to choose between the two options while due to conditioning u really don't have freedom in the sense we normally talk about it.

so what is it? i think the problem with it is that it isn't exactly what we thought it was, but rather a negation of restrictions, or at least the appearence of a negation of restrictions of your personal choice.

my 2 cents ...

[AcidGoethe]

Freedom is an illusion created by our inability to grasp and understand all the variables that influence us.

[Jacque]

The Devil's Dictionary:

FREEDOM, n.
1. Exemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half dozen of restraint's infinite multitude of methods. 2. A political condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual monopoly.

[ApeTheDog]

So.

Our freedom is limited by people, in that people are not willing to exercise their freedom if the consequence of their actions will result in something unpleasant or death. This is the same as freedom being restricted due to people not being supernatural beings/able to shape and change the universe after their own will.

Our freedom is also limited by what we know, and our thoughts are influenced by what our mind thinks is most opportune - and our mind in turn is heavily influenced by exteral factors. Our thoughts are not free, they are a logical consequence of what we know, and derrive from this knowledge.

I think the first one is responsable for the notion of freedom we all know. The teenager that wants to be more free actually wants to be able to influence the world more, and to be in an environment that is less restricting. The prisoner wants to be free, so he too can influence things.

So freedom is really a synonym for omnipotence, and omnicognisence. To be able to do all, and know all - would be freedom?

It does not sound all that pleasant. If you know everything, you'll always make the best decision.

I think to be truly free, one would also have to be entirely random, so one would make choices based on nothing, not on the knowledge or possibilities available.

[nBT]

how very correct,

free will and moral cannot be eliminated

[GrimTweaker]

The fundamental assumption made by every science, hard or soft, directly contradicts freedom, or "free will." At the bottom of any scientific theory is the beleif that the forces of nature do not occur randomly. That is, they are patterned and conditional. If you beleive in the legitimacy of science then you cannot beleive in free will.

Science is just not far along enough to predict, say, you being the first to step out on that dance floor. At science's current level of development, it still appears as though we are free-willed individuals who have control over our destiny's because there is still a tremendous amount of phenomena we have yet to explain.

Another example: Many people who smoke develop cancer, and we can say this with great confidence; however, not everyone that smokes develops cancer. How do we explain these deviations from the pattern? Well, simply put, we haven't figured out what is different about the people that don't get it. It could be genetics, or hell maybe even socio-economic status. The bottom line is one day we will be able to correctly predict every single person who will develop cancer.

Essentially if you beleive in science then you can't beleive in freedom. Lets face it, mankind is simply a more advanced from of animal reacting to stimuli.

[melancholeric]

The fundamental assumption made by every science, hard or soft, directly contradicts freedom, or "free will." At the bottom of any scientific theory is the beleif that the forces of nature do not occur randomly. That is, they are patterned and conditional. If you beleive in the legitimacy of science then you cannot beleive in free will.
You forgot quantum mechanics. Not that it would have anything to do with free will, but quantum phenomena are apparently random, and I don't know if any scientist claims otherwise. I might be wrong though.

Although some wacky neuroscientists are trying to prove that our brains are quantumized and thus not completely predictable, implying free will of some kind. But that kind of "free will" would be like russian roulette. Completely random; essentially "god playing dice". Not very "free" if you ask me.

[Ka.avik]

You forgot quantum mechanics.
Another thing forgotten, is that science is empirical, that is it can only measure what can be seen. The spiritual realm, by most accounts, cannot thusly be measured.

Those same accounts say we have both a spirit, and a soul. And that it is our soul that provides free will. While I'm inclined to reject GT's interpretation of free-will under science anyway, I believe I don't have to, as it comes to it's limits before it steps on any of my toes. http://forums.intpcentral.com/images/smilies/blink.gif

[GrimTweaker]

"You forgot quantum mechanics. Not that it would have anything to do with free will, but quantum phenomena are apparently random, and I don't know if any scientist claims otherwise. I might be wrong though.

Although some wacky neuroscientists are trying to prove that our brains are quantumized and thus not completely predictable, implying free will of some kind. But that kind of "free will" would be like russian roulette. Completely random; essentially "god playing dice". Not very "free" if you ask me.""

Sounds interesting, I haven't studied much physics so I can't quite remember what the implications of quantum theory are. Either way, a theory is a theory and those are most likely too young to confide in, they could be way off. Who knows though.

[GrimTweaker]

"Another thing forgotten, is that science is empirical, that is it can only measure what can be seen. The spiritual realm, by most accounts, cannot thusly be measured."

And that is why it can be givin no credence, because there is no "evidence." We live in a secular society, every thing needs to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt by means of the accepted rules of logic. Don't doubt rationality.

Religion has no evidence to support it, it exists only through faith (which you already know). Which would you gamble on? To pose an analogy:

Suppose you had the choice to put your money in a slot machine that has been "empirically" observed to pay out 1/4 (science) or a machine that has been observed to pay out 1/10 (religion) with both costing the same amount and pumping out the same winnings of course. Is anyone going to put their money in the 1/10 because they have FAITH that it will pay out for them? No, of course not. Those betting on the 1/4 will become rich and powerful the ones going on faith will become poor and die. Rationality wins and spirituality has no place in acedemia accept for when being studied as a subjective human creation. The words "soul" and "spirit" mean nothing to me, they don't exist.

[Architectonic]

Another thing forgotten, is that science is empirical, that is it can only measure what can be seen. The spiritual realm, by most accounts, cannot thusly be measured.

This can easily be misinterpreted.

By 'seen', you actually mean observed/percieved - so if the spiritual realm interferes at all with our realm, then it technically can be observed and therefore verified by science if it does indeed exist.

Science, is basically the closest approximation to understanding reality that we have - and in general, it continues to get more accurate.

Quantum mechanics is not purely random - but there is a degree of unpredictibility involved. However, this may still potentially due to an incomplete understanding of the mechanism involved.

[Pierce]

When I try to understand a concept, I try to frame it in some kind of context. I often find contrast very helpful, for example antonyms for freedom include captivity and bondage, enchainment, enslavement, imprisonment, incarceration, subjugation, dependence, and subjection. Then I'm often reminded of a proverb or bit of scripture: "A man is a slave to whatever has mastered him." And then other sayings come to mind: escape is running away from something; freedom is running toward something. In a larger context (but still without defining it), I consider freedom to be one of the prime motivations of a human heart, the first in fact. The others would be reward, adventure, provision, relationship, influence and experience. I suppose I would define freedom as the state where one can make a choice without coersion, either internal or external. Interestingly, as I think about it, freedom only matters internally, as ultimately, I think, the external reality will mirror the internal truth.

[GrimTweaker]

What matters to you internally was put there from external forces.

[CENTIPEDE HEAD]

Freedom is a term that gets abused. Do we have it in a Democratic society
or did our enslavements just take on a different form? Here we can choose our religion or choose to start a business. We have the freedom to speak out. Yet we have the freedom to be ostracized by others who reject our choice of religion or the freedom to lose our asses in business. We have the freedom to say anything but not freedom from the consequences of having said it. We have the freedom to choose our job, but in most cases that puts massive limits on what you want to do from day to day. Thus freedom to choose a job is negated. Perhaps we just have freedom enough to choose our own shackles. The adage goes "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." I think the same might be said of freedom. For example, when I walk
through the "petite bourgeois" new-construction neighborhood that borders on mine I try to take on the mindset of someone living in abject poverty, someone living on the streets who can't feed themselves or their children.
Such a person looking at this suburban scene might see the fabled promised land. "Running water! Shelters! Food! Vehicles, no less! Drive where you want! Computers! Wow! What freedom! What security!" Then I toggle back to my natural mindset and I see a phalanx of hideous box-shaped self-imposed prisons. I see a vulgar display of ugly suburban sprawl stretching as far as the eye can see with the wooden skeletons of more beastly McMansions being erected every day. On this particular street, there isn't even so much as a tree to break up the monotonous tableau. I see interest rates and hulking, gas-thirsty SUVs stuffed into garages. I see check to check living, car notes, insurance costs, mortgages, the monotonous jobs that are made compulsory because of the debt these houses represent.
I perceive the quiet desperation, troubled marriages, the keeping up with the Jones, and the subtle enslavement at the heart of the American dream. What's worse, is I see a failure of the imagination. Given our supposed political "freedom", is this all we can do with it? Then I realized that this thought process is toxic, leading to nothing. I let the thought go. Perhaps this may be the ultimate freedom-the concious decision to let a mental formation go, to dissociate from it. Neither perception is any more real than the other. It is real only to the extent that I personally identify with it.
Freedom may have a dark side. Perhaps it isn't all it's cracked up to be.
There is the concept of the "tyranny of choice." A recent article in Scientific American described a study of the effect of the endless variety of choices for consumers in Western society. The effect was that it depresses many of us. Given an overwhelming possibility of selection, to choose any one thing is to "NOT CHOOSE" everything else. Thus any joy gained from the choice is offset by the suffering of losing the other options. Sometimes freedom can be the worst thing to happen to someone, such as a young person going off to college who isn't ready for the responsibility (restrictions?) that freedom requires. (What a paradox. "With great freedom comes great responsibility.") Then they proceed to screw up their lives with bad choices. The consolation that at least they had the "freedom" to do that rings hollow.